Insights, opinions and a point of view from a call center, contact center and customer experience consulting veteran related to call centers, contact centers, customer service and customer satisfaction based on 35+ years of industry knowledge and experience.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Toyota Just Doesn’t Understand: Poor Design Creates Poor Experience
I like to think of myself as a patient person, though it has been said that I don't always suffer fools well. I was having a happy retail experience, well at least as happy as one can have when you leave $1200 with the dealer. I did need new front brakes, so all in all I was quite happy and content, when the service advisor choose to make me even happier. "Here" he said as he handed me a post card, "register on this site and you could win a thousand dollars". I joke that would only leave me $200 in the hole and he laughed as well.

Back at the office I went to the 'clubtoyota.ca' web site and attempted to register. I input my VIN # and all other requested information and hot enter. The first try is returned an incorrect postal code. I had added a space where none was required/accepted. It would have been nice if they told me this, but no biggie, I corrected and continued. Still got the 'correct your postal code' message two more times, before the website displayed the 'please phone our call centre' message. While I was getting frustrated, I thought a $1,000 is still a $1,000, so I dialled the phone.

After negotiating the auto attendant menu and holding for 35 seconds I was connected to an agent. After explaining my challenges on the site, she explained that I may have been entering the wrong address and it had to match my home address. I thought of my retweet yesterday of Seth Godin's post regarding frustration with poorly designed websites - HERE. If the site had mentioned that the address had to match my home address and not the one registered with the dealer, I could have navigated it. The agent then told me that if I had moved since I bought the vehicle, then my home address wouldn't have worked either and it had to be my home address when I bought the vehicle.

Now I know why Toyota is promoting this web site and giving away thousands of $$. They want to ensure that their database is accurate and current. Who knows Toyota may have a recall (sorry a low blow, but I couldn't resist). They also understand the concept of relationship management and want to be able to connect with me through as many touch-points as possible.

Of course by the end of the 4 minute call with my address corrected and verified by the agent, I said good-bye and attempted to login to the site. Once again an incorrect postal code message and after I verified that what I was entering was what the agent had said it should be i was once again asked to call the Toyota call centre.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the generosity and goodwill of the dealer by offering me a chance to win $1,000 had evaporated. I was out 30 minutes of my time, had seen my satisfaction with Toyota fall from a reasonable 8 out of 10 when first handed the card by the dealer to now a 2 out of 10 now. I wondered to myself was the company (Toyota) just dim when they created a site to register, reward and recognise customers or was their intention to demonstrate how to tick off customers who were relatively happy before receiving such a gift?

I suspect that their intentions were and are honourable. I suspect that no one paid attention to the website or web design. A few well placed instructions could have eliminated my call and frustration.
At the end of this process, my opinion of Toyota has taken a beating (and I now own my third consecutive Toyota vehicle), my respect for them as an organization has diminished (how many blindfolded monkeys does it take to make a website) and to make matters worse, it cost me time, but also cost Toyota money; 6 failed web interactions, one 4 minute call and the downstream damage done by one unhappy customer tweeting to the world.

I suspect that a better effort in building the website would have cost a whole lot less. This is the case with so many organizations that fail to extend their customer experience vision to all touch-points or fail to align all contact points to the vision.

10 Relatively Serious Predictions for 2011
Guest Blogger John Cockerill1. There will be a future however bleak or rosy, it will still be. Take off the rose colored glasses and stop forecasting historical plus 5%. That is what a demand forecast is for. Get one now.
2. Politicians will still get elected; and we all will complain regardless of who is elected and their policies. Now is a great time to examine your own policies, are they complete, are they up to date are they relevant to the way your center operates today?
3. Calls will still likely be the large percentage of contact traffic types in your centers. People like to talk with people. It is organizations that generally push for self-service and non voice channel (chat and email) and all of these can add value to you center. But don’t forget to pay attention to voice it is likely to be you largest channel for the near future.
4. Mondays will continue to be the busiest day of the week for most centers, so don’t schedule the same number of staff on Monday as on Friday or even on Tuesday for that matter.
5. Finding and keeping good staff will remain the secret to contact center success. Oops, didn’t mean to let that one out.
6. Friday and Monday will account for 40% of all absences and illness on in centers working standard business hours and days. For most centers this does far more damage to your service levels on Mondays, so try asking your staff to be ill and absent on Friday…or at least to start their weekend one day earlier, so they are recovered by Monday.
7. Agent training in contact center will for the next year in many centers to remain thought of as a ‘nice to do’ not a ‘must do’. Here’s a thought…what if we hire good people and ensure that they have the training and knowledge to assist our customer over the phone. Would that improve our CSAT and perhaps our ESAT as well?
8. Fault calls will remain the largest segment of calls for most centers. Who’s fault? It’s your fault…well maybe not you personally, but your organization. What are you doing in your center to reduce fault calls?
9. Marketing may talk to the center regularly and let them know what campaigns, and programs will be run and associated volume expected and likely to impact the center. I don’t believe that is all that likely; but it could happen. I have faith that it should have one of these years. Let me know when it does.
10. Predictions for the future like demand forecasts are prone to have a margin of error (50%) regardless of the authority and foresight. Pick a point and go for the future with belief that you can and will figure it out and it will be rosy. If you can conceive it, believe it, you can achieve it.

Friday, December 3, 2010

Call Center experts from New York City 311, Philly311, Unity Health, Scotiabank, Preferred Health Partners, speak on industry trends, how the trends are impacting their contact centers, the role and impact of social media on their centres and customers.
These videos are available on the Taylor Reach Group YouTube video channel and is available via this link

"Strategy is the direction and scope of an organization over the long-term: which achieves advantage for the organization through its configuration of resources within a challenging environment, to meet the needs of markets and to fulfill stakeholder expectations".

All businesses have a strategy, many by definition and constructed to reflect their own business realities, customers and markets. Some strategies are undocumented and driven by entrepreneurial zeal, but every bit as much of a strategy as those defined. In short a strategy provides the organization with a goal and direction towards that goal that it aspires to realize through the conscious and determined efforts of its staff and stakeholders.

So is a strategy required for elements within the organization such as customer service or contact centers? I would suggest that yes. A strategy or strategic plan is essential for the contact center to support the organization as it works to realize the corporate goal.

Companies in developing their strategic plans define who their customers are; and their primary audience focus on how to create value that underpins the strategy: The Customers come first or the Employees come first or their shareholders come first. If the focus is on the customer then the contact center will be critical to interacting and serving customers needs and requirements. If the focus is on employees, it is often extrapolated to explain that happy employees will work harder and deliver superior service to customers. Even in the cost conscious shareholder value creation model customers must be serviced. The reality is the contact centers are the most common communications channel between customers/consumers and the organization. The contact center plays a critical role in supporting the corporate strategy and influencing customer satisfaction.

So how to develop a strategy or strategic plan for the contact center? First acknowledge that as contact center leaders we do not have a ‘blank canvas’ to work with. The corporate strategy has already been defined and is evident in the Mission Statement, Vision and Values documents. In reviewing these documents we can gain an insight into the strategy, the customers served, the manner in which value is created, the goal and objectives of the strategy and the values which are the touchstone for making difficult decisions. So the development of contact center strategy is completed in the context of the corporate direction.

Second we know that our role is to interact with the customers in a manner that supports the corporate strategy. Lastly we know what the Vision for the future is. We know where the company is going. Our challenge as contact center operators is develop a roadmap and plan to support the evolution of the contact center in lock-step with the evolution of the company towards its Vision.

The key of an effective call or contact center strategic plan is to support and align with the overall strategy for the business. Implementing this sounds fairly straightforward but can be fraught with challenges and problems. For example what is the appropriate service level target for the defined primary customer group versus a secondary customer group, who, while not primary is still a significant source of revenue? How can you reduce the costs to serve one customer segment while increasing resource allocation and delivering superior value to another? How does your agent or representative model map to these distinct groups? Can everyone serve both customer segments? Can they do it well? How do you embrace new Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) goals to support the strategy? Are you even sure that your current metrics, such as internal quality are providing accurate customer satisfaction data?

The first undertaking that the center operator must complete is to ensure that they understand fully and in detail the corporate strategy. Too often contact centers launch initiatives to improve customer satisfaction, or reduce costs only to discover later that the corporate goal wasn’t an across the board CSAT improvement; or that the cost reduction initiatives undermine revenues and repurchase from the primary customer segment. Sit down with the management and review the mission, vision, values statements and any additional detail and specifics that the manager can provide.

In the context of the two examples cited above what is meant by customer satisfaction? In which segments of the customer base should satisfaction be improved, why and how? What is the intention for the remaining customer segments? How will the segmentation of customers to allow a focus on the primary customer group? What is the impact for example on the queuing structure and methodology? Is the CSAT of the remaining segments to remain unchanged, decline or increase? What is the budgetary impact anticipated with these changes?

Regarding cost reduction what are the boundaries associated with this change? Is this change really desired to improve the profitability of customer transaction? If profitability is the real goal then the actions taken to reduce costs cannot at the same time reduce sales conversion (the percentage of the customers who buy), nor reduce average order size or frequency. The establishment of boundaries limits the range of options open to the operator and also supports alignment between the two strategic plans.

Alignment is critical. Without both strategic plans being in synch, they can be working in opposite directions, and the attainment of both of the plans objectives and goals can be compromised. As the primary communication channel between customers and the organization the call or contact center can have a disproportional impact on the overall performance of the company in attaining its stated goals and objectives.

Alignment goes beyond the Vision statement and the future state end goals of the organization. The center must be aligned with the core Values established as well. If the company has determined that its value creation model focuses on an Employee First strategy then the contact center must ‘walk the talk’. In an Employee First strategy, the premise is that happy employees will create happy customers who will continue to patronize the company and buy its products and services.

How can an operator embrace an Employee First strategy in an ‘always on’, high change and structured contact center environment? What do we do with our existing metrics? Is Average Handle Time (AHT) an effective or even an appropriate metric in this environment; or does it simply encourage representatives to feel conflicted. For example “Does the company want me to satisfy the customer or get off the phone quickly?” Such conflicts are not aligned to employee satisfaction (ESAT). Where there is conflict there will also be confusion and frustration. This hardly sounds like a successful Employee First strategy. So examine the metrics and KPI’s to ensure that what is measured is what you want to attain.

The steps outlined so far focus on immediate operations in the center: how the center has to change on a call by call basis. But what about a long range view. How do these changes impact on the incoming demand in terms of volumes of calls, emails, chats and self service? The operator needs to make and challenge assumptions regarding how these changes affect and impact demand. This is important. It is the forecasted demand, along with service level and AHT that determine the labor costs and budgets.

In concert with reviewing the demand the operator also needs to revisit other key aspects of the center operational model: people, process, technology and methodology. Aligning to the corporate strategy impact requires changes in how the center operates. The wise operator looks at how the operations of the center can be changed to improve overall alignment. How can we change the processes to align better with the strategic goals? Is there a technology available that better manages demand or facilitates better segmentation and cost management? These could be structural changes in terms of how the contact center operates today, who it serves and how it serves those customers.

Structural change is almost certainly required to align and support the attainment of the results set out in the corporate strategic plan. Albert Einstein said that “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” If what the contact center was doing today delivered the results sought by the strategic plan then the strategic plan would not have been created.

To review, there are 7 steps that must be completed before a contact center strategic plan can be developed. Complete each step fully before articulating the contact center strategic plan
7 Steps to a Contact Center Strategic Plan
1- Understand fully the corporate Strategy,
2- Understand customer segmentation and priorities,
3- Identify the impact of customer segments and priorities on queuing management,
4- Understand applicable boundaries,
5- Examine your metrics and KPI’s
6- Review and revise your demand forecast
7- Examine you operational methodology for structural changes
With the 7 steps created you can articulate a contact center strategy with the knowledge that it will support the business goals; and move the organization one step closer to the realization of the corporate strategic plan.
For more information on developing a contact center strategic plan visit our website at http://www.thetaylorreachgroup.com or contact the author.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

How good is your Training: Take the Quiz
By: John Cockerill
Understatement of the day -Training is important. Just about everyone says so. But like the weather everyone talks about but few do anything about it.
Here is a quick test to gauge the health and effectiveness of the training in your center.
1. Is there a formal and documented training plan (a curriculum)? If yes, does it cover or contain:
a. Induction and take-on of new agents?
b. Ongoing training and upgrade path for agents after induction training?
c. A list of quizzes and tests?
d. Training tied to processes and employing process maps?
e. Employ actual call recordings and screen shots?
f. Criteria for graduating from training or becoming qualified to complete assignments with new skills?
g. Is there a list of all systems used by agents and associated practice or transactions to prove proficiency?
2. Are all training materials up-to-date?
Here’s a quick method for checking. Is there an electronic copy of all materials used? Does the last date review, version number, and by whom appear on all documents in the binder or given to the agents? If no, then they are likely out of date or at best need to be review by someone knowledgeable. Call centers are a high change environment. If there is no date on the material assume it is out of date and get it verified.
3. Are frequently asked questions (FAQ’s) used in the center?
If so, check how many have been added or updated in the last 3 months. Can the existing agents answer 20% accurately without referencing the material? Are these posted on the organizations website for callers to self serve?
4. Is the training designed for adult learners?
Adults need to have practice close to the subject delivery. Quick and accurate feedback to adjust performance is critical so errors don’t accumulate. Design sessions into 40 minute delivery blocks with 20 to 30 minutes of immediate practice, role play and feedback. Provide summary sheets for review of key points to aid memory.
5. Are all the subjects reviewed with and by the agents in an optimum cycle?
Best practices suggest a simple review cycle of: immediate, 24 hours, 7 days, 30 days will increase retention of material by over 80%. Repetition of practice is important, just like mommy said. Practice does make perfect.
6. Do all systems have a training module or sandbox?
If not, the agents will have to work with live data. Not a good idea if quality of data is valued in the organization. If they are working with live data, is that done in a manner that enables each transaction to be held for review and approval by someone who is expert in the work?
7. What is the drop out rate during training and how does that compare to the center turnover rate?
A turnover rate that is high and where there is no drop out rate the training simply passing out problems to the floor where dealing with them is more expensive and troublesome to the organization. This is also an indicator that the training is not really equipping the agents to meet minimum position expectations. Where you experience drop outs in the training is also important. Watch the number that drop out just before or after tests. This is fear of failure, for those who drop out to avoid the test and fear of reality for those who fail the test and then drop out.
8. How many sample calls and transactions are in the training library? Do they cover all transactions, most transactions or only some? Are there both good and bad examples? Can you see screen shots as well as the audio? How many practice responses are expected during the training?

Using samples in class sessions means less time on the floor when doing side by side training. It also means being able to show good and bad calls of similar transactions to demonstrate the behaviours and practices wanted in the organization.
9. Is there an analysis of recruiting and training quality done recently?
Turnover and agent quality scores from monitoring by date provides insight to any center as to the effectiveness of the recruiting and how well training is doing by cohort of new agents.
10. How much time is allocated for training of existing agents?
QA/QM coaching doesn’t count. Real training in one on one session, groups or classes of new material, tests etc. Is it accounted for in the annual budget? Is there any provisioning for training in the forecast and scheduling?
11. What linkages exist between the training, new learning and compensation?
As agents move along the continuum of learning, gaining experience in the work and center there needs to be recognition for the effort and acquisition of expertise. Changes to compensation is one method along with public credit of that expertise.
12. Finally and this is the litmus test. Do other departments want the call center staff?
If yes, something is right. If not, there is likely a lot of work to do. Many organizations today require staff to spend their initial time in their center(s). Other departments often find that they don’t have to spend as much on training money and time when they steal staff from the call center. This ‘poaching’ is a compliment to the expertise and systematic approach to grooming new and existing people for roles in any organization. Don’t fight it. Rejoice. And consider charging the departments back for that training and lost productivity. Some firms do with good success.
This list of a dozen questions won’t give a complete audit of the training process but will provide a quick insight into whether or not it needs your attention.
Remember it is difficult to hold an agent, supervisor or manager accountable for success if the measures of success and how to achieve them are not presented in a clear and simple manner. That is what a good training program provides.
Yes training is important. An effective training program is imperative.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Fast Facts- Help or Helpless Desk By Colin TaylorA new study, “Help Desk Efficiency Report 2010,” from 1E, a software/services company found a remarkable number dysfunctions in the Help Desk of the 1,000 plus IT professionals who participated in the study. Amongst the challenges:* 44% of users feel that ordering software from their Help Desk is inefficient and time consuming,* 2/3rds of users will wait a week or more for the software requested,* Half will follow up to see the status of their request,* 15% of software requests are never fulfilled,* 37% still must contact their Help Desk by Phone,* The call to a Help Desk can cost $75.00,* 33% say they have 5 or more applications on their system that they never use,* 69% of users do not know what the software they request costs,

While the results of the study are interesting in and of themselves, and it is not surprising that 1E provides services and solutions to improve the operational efficiency of Help Desks. Yet the statistics are concerning… more than a third of users must phone the help desk. While I am all in favor of call centers, haven’t they heard of email? I would think that an email would create a superior audit trial. That audit trail could be employed to see what happened to the 15% of software requests that are never fulfilled. What happened to these requests?...” Thank you for calling the help desk, we are busy right now please call us back at another time”. Or perhaps it is not the request that didn’t get fulfilled; perhaps the individuals were no longer around and could not be fulfilled. Of course if the email request was mapped to the ERP application then perhaps the one week delay cited by more than 66% of participants could be reduced and the half of respondents who can’t work without their software would have other options besides staring at the walls or calling the help desk to follow up on their request. It’s no wonder that a call to the help desk can cost $75 given all of the efficiency actions identified above, well that and the 5 applications that are never used…IT has to recover those software license costs from somewhere.Of course as with most studies the results are designed to shock, surprise and garner attention. That is certainly what the sponsors are hoping for. But there are many of highly effective and efficient help desks out there. These effective help desks have developed or embraced solutions that make the environment more productive and more enjoyable to all involved.

The following three examples of low hanging fruit can all contribute to reducing the cost of a help desk request;• Establishing a web form on the intranet directly linked to the asset management application that submits the equipment request and matches it with the appropriate approvals. This can knock days off the delivery time.• By standardizing desktop images based upon class of employee the set up and configuration can be completed quickly and efficiently. • By ensuring that each discrete user class is matched to its functional requirements the surplus applications can be eliminated and costs saved.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

6th Annual Call Center Conference and Expo in IstanbulColin Taylor spoke at the 6th Annual Call Center Conference and Expo last month in Istanbul, Turkey. Colin spoke on Strategy and specifically on “Customer Roadmap, Customer Experience and Customer Satisfaction: Planning the Journey and Executing the Plan. The event put on by IMI Conferences was first class. There were about 300 attendees, 25 or so exhibitors and a suite of International speakers, including yours truly. Meltem Karateke (President of IMI Conferences) and her team did a great job organizing the event. The schedule was maintained, the food, venue and organization was very good. They keep their speakers on schedule and well organized in terms of travel both to Turkey as well as to the venue (the Conference Center).

Colin Taylor Speaking in Istanbul

The speakers were universally good with themes of “Extreme Customer Satisfaction” and ‘Customer Experience). It was really refreshing to get away from the habit in the US of featuring speakers who have paid for the privilege or have paid to have the clients shill for them in case studies, and hear from experts educating rather than selling.The event was unique each day opened with one of the finalists for the ‘Most Talented Call Center Award’ here is a link to a bit of the second runner up act.For those of you unfamiliar with the Turkish Call Center industry here are a few interesting facts from the October 2010 Karya Research Report:* There are more than 1000 call centers in Turkey,* There are over 41,000 agent positions* The annual growth rate is 18.9%* The market size is estimated at $1 billion with 45% of this market served by outsource firms,* 52% of Agents are 18-24 years old* Almost 40% of agents are university graduates* The largest sectors are Telecom and Finance* The fastest growing sector is the public sector which grew 47% in the past year

Post by Turaj SeyrafiaanIn this post, we will look at some of the financial indicators and metrics that are a part of call and contact center operations. As more and more contact centres are treated as a separate business unit, it becomes necessary for contact centre management to deliver expected services while improving their bottom line financial results. Failing to provide services within a given budgets or financial targets puts pressure on the management team to reduce services, offer lower quality service or both! Even without such financial pressure, providing services at a high cost creates opportunities for other centres (outsourcers) to offer better financial results (i.e. profit) to the organization and as a result, make the internal contact centre redundant. As contact centres evolve, it is the responsibility of the contact centre management to understand their financial results (cost of providing services) and continuously improve it. While overall financial requirements and results are indicated and discussed as either Capital or Operating Expenditure, a more granular, detailed and specific indicators are required to understand and measure the improvement in the efficiency of the contact centre. The most common indicators are Cost per Call and Cost per Minute.Cost per CallThis is an overall indicator representing an average cost for each call (this indicator can be expanded to Cost per Contact to include all types of contacts including emails and chat). This indicator can be calculated based on historical data or for the current year. What is included in the cost varies from centre to centre depending on what items have been included in the Operating Expenditures (We will talk more about Operating vs. Capital Expenditure later in this article). In majority of cases, the costs include salaries (Agents, Supervisory, Management and support staff), technology (software licensing and maintenance) and telecommunications. Other organizations may include less evident costs such as benefits, Real Estate/rent and utilities to provide the total (and more complete) cost of delivering / receiving a contact.Cost per Call provides a valuable piece of information as well as providing a reality check about the operation. As this indicator provides the average cost for each and every call, it brings the focus not only to how that money is spent and how to improve the service delivered (combination of AHT and service level), but also how many contacts are being made and if they can be reduced. Analyzing the numbers could also point to a less costly method or channel that can provide the same (or similar) level of service with the same customer satisfaction. As an example it is widely accepted that Self Serve contacts (automated) are less costly than a live contact and hence typical push to provide more and more automated services. (When doing such comparisons, one must consider the potential negative impact on customer satisfaction and eventually on customer loyalty).Cost per MinuteAs mentioned before, Cost per Call provides an average cost for each and every call or contact. This number can be broken down for different channels (if present) to provide a more accurate data, but what about different types of contacts within the same channel? For example one call might be a simple update of address while the next call has to do with obtaining a mortgage or car insurance! In these cases, calculating and presenting the average cost may not offer meaningful data as average handle time for each call will be greatly different. In these situations Cost per Minute would be a much better indicator as it provides a common base for comparison and operational improvement. By definition, Cost per Minute is not dependant on AHT and only provides data with regard to cost structure of the centre (people, technology and telecommunication) and the impact of the occupancy rate (the higher the rate, the lower the cost per minute).Which one of these two indicators should be calculated, reported and used? The answer depends on the variety of the calls at the centre and the desired details and accuracy. If AHT is consistent across different call types (minimum variance), then Cost per Call can provide complete information while easier to calculate. On the other hand, for centres with a full range of call types (simple to complex) and call lengths (short to long) it is better to use Cost per Minute. (One can always calculate costs for each specific type of calls based on its AHT). The issue of the Cost per Call vs. Cost per Minute becomes more important when dealing with outsourcers as it may become the main cost parameter in the contract. It has been said that Outsourcers typically prefer Cost per Call, as this framework allows them to concentrate their improvements on AHT, and as a result increase their profit margin. Cost per minute (along with an agreed Service Level) does not provide the same framework for outsourcers to improve on the profit margins by reducing the AHT. However a Cost per Minute model could encourage the unscrupulous outsourcers to increase Handle time to increase profit margins.Operating vs. Capital ExpendituresTraditionally, in any organization, a business unit must handle two different set of expenses. The larger and infrequent items such as purchase of Real Estate, furniture, desktop computers and major software are treated differently both in terms of P&L (Profit and Loss) reporting and for taxation purposes. These expenses are considered and reported as Capital Expenditure. The ongoing and recurring expenses such as salary and benefits, utilities and smaller infrequent items are categorized and reported as Operating Expenses. What is the difference between the two? Well, the answer lies at how each of these is treated. By default, majority of the larger items are one time or perhaps infrequent expenses and are for physical items that have an expected life longer than a year (such as a desktop computer). In effect, even though an organization may have incurred the total cost at the beginning (incurring the cost should not be mistaken with payment options), the benefit from the item lasts much longer. For that reason, such costs are amortized or spread over the expected life of the item and only certain portion of the cost (depreciation) is included in the Profit and Loss statement. Operating Expenditures, on the other hand are those expenses that occur on a regular basis (on-going) for the services (and products) that are consumed regularly (such as agents salary). These types of expenses do not have an expected life and are directly related to the operation of the business unit. In simple term, Capital Expenditures, are the money that is invested in creating a business entity (be it a contact centre or a manufacturing unit), while Operating Expenditures are the cost of operating that entity day in and day out. The overall cost used in calculating the Cost per Call or Cost per Minute is usually based on the Operating Expenditures and does not include the Capital Expenditures, the exception to this treatment would be where outsourcing or a ‘carve out’ where assets would be purchased by the outsourcer.In today’s call center environment there is less clarity between Capital and Operating Expenses due to the rise of cloud computing, SaaS and hosted solutions. All of these developments allow companies and call centers to forgo capital expenditures to secure and employ a vendor’s solution and instead pay a fixed monthly rate per user. Heretofore these costs would have been Capital purchases, but today become Operating Expenses.

Full Time Equivalent (FTE)One last operational indicator, although not specifically financial, is the Full Time Equivalent or FTE for short. As discussed in previous issues, many contact centres hire part time employees to complement their full time work force. Although having part time employees provides flexibility in work force management, counting the number of agents directly as a head count does not provide an accurate picture (especially in terms of salary). For this reason, and for the purpose of planning and financial reporting, majority of centres use the working hours to convert the number of part-time staff into equivalent of a full-time employee (for example if two agents each work half the time, for the year, they would be considered as one Full Time Equivalent or FTE). In these cases, the operating budget is based on the total FTE for the year and the contact centre management can decide how and when to utilize the total budget. It should be noted that typically in a contact centre, staffing (salary, payroll expenses and benefits) can account for up to 75% of total operating expenses.The Bottom LineThe overall operation of any business is dependant on its ability to successfully manage its limited financial resources. The above indicators are used to assist contact centre management to understand and improve the final financial results. It is important to understand the costs the center incurs and what choices and options the center and organization have in relation to reducing these costs. Poor service isn’t always less expensive than superior service. A best-in-class organization can provide excellent customer service while operating within reasonable and sustainable financial results.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Like culture, all companies deliver a Customer Experience. Also like culture, it isn’t always what the company intended. It is often a poor customer experience.

Does your company deliver the promised customer experience? Do you have a document outlining what the Customer Experience is supposed to be?, No, Thats not surprising, few companies do. And all of us who don’t have a Customer Experience model in place are in good company. According to a recent Forresters’ report while 90% of executives said that the customer experience was very important or critical, only 11% consider themselves to be very disciplined in their approach to customer experience.Let’s look at an interaction with a call center from the customers’ perspective

As you can see from the above illustration the customer expectations and emotions rise and fall as the call progresses. All of us who have listened, monitored or taken live calls know this to be true. What are the ‘pain points’ on the call we looked at earlier?• Service Level – waiting too long to get the call answered,• “Unexpectedly high call volume” – unexpected volume or poor forecasting/scheduling,• Policies etc.

At all of the key points during the call the agent has an opportunity to support the brand messages and to meet the customer expectations or not. Of course it is far simple to suggest that the agent could have done x or y. The truth of the matter is that it is the company that makes the decisions that impact the service delivery.

The agent can really only work within the parameters the company sets out. It is the company that determines the grade of service that they want the call center to meet. It is the company through the center management that forecasts the calls and contact volumes and sets the schedules for the number of agents on shift. It is the company that establishes policies and procedures that the agents must adhere too.

Now let’s not place on the blame on the call center and its management solely. It is the marketing group that creates and sends the messages that create the customer expectations which leads the customer to place calls into the call center with these expectations.

So how can we ensure that your customers receive the experience we would like them to have? An experience that builds loyalty; An experience that supports repurchase; An experience that reduces customer churn and attrition.Before starting to architect the Customer Experience, let’s start by defining itThe key elements of any Customer Experience related to the contact center has to include:

1. The ease of access – to information, to purchase, to inquire, to complain or to fix a problem,2. The speed of access – Service level, hoops customers have to jump through – how many times do they have to enter their account number etc. time to return an email or resolve a trouble ticket?3. The quality of interaction- Where they able to get done what they wanted too? Was it easy, was it efficient, logical?Customer Experience is the experience that a customer has when interacting with a company. This includes how they chose to interact with us and how easy it is for them to complete the interaction.

IBM defines Customer Experience as “The designed interaction between a customer and your organization”. The key element of this definition is the design element. The message here is regardless what your customer experience is and regardless whether it is good or bad, it is what you have designed through your actions, processes and procedures.

Before starting to architect the Customer Experience, let’s start by defining itThe key elements of any Customer Experience related to the contact center has to include:

1. The ease of access – to information, to purchase, to inquire, to complain or to fix a problem,2. The speed of access – Service level, hoops customers have to jump through – how many times do they have to enter their account number etc. time to return an email or resolve a trouble ticket?3. The quality of interaction- Where they able to get done what they wanted too? Was it easy, was it efficient, logical?Customer Experience is the experience that a customer has when interacting with a company. This includes how they chose to interact with us and how easy it is for them to complete the interaction.

IBM defines Customer Experience as “The designed interaction between a customer and your organization”. The key element of this definition is the design element. The message here is regardless what your customer experience is and regardless whether it is good or bad, it is what you have designed through your actions, processes and procedures.With this definition in hand can now look at how we can design our desired customer experience.

To do this we need to start at the beginning. Few companies today are looking at the customer experience holistically. For those that do consider the question of Customer Experience, it is often only a marketing concept…how should our stores, marketing and advertising look and feel to support the brand.The call centre is generally not connected organizationally to Marketing and most often resides under Operations or Sales. This distance between silos can mean that the Marketing group has little understanding of what takes place in the call center. This despite the fact that centers are the single most common communications channel an organization can have with its customers. Purdue University found that 92% of customers judge an organization based upon the interactions they have with a company’s call center.

So how can we as call center executives join the dots between the desired customer experience and customer satisfaction to deliver the result through our call centers? Like with any travel, once you have a destination in mind you can then develop a roadmap to get you to where you are going.But we have a few challenges in developing a roadmap…For one thing we do not know where we are starting from.We know that most companies have not defined and documented their customer experience. So how can we expect to know where we are at now and how we are doing?

The first step in our process is to assess and determine where we are now; we need to understand what the customer experience is today.

First, we need an inventory of the channels, methods and touch-points through which our customers interact with us: phone, email, chat, mail, in-store etc. Do all of the touch-points end in a common single CRM that tracks each ’touch’ the company has with their customers? What about marketing initiatives: email blasts, SMS, print media, daily specials, white mail, etc.Second, we need to analyze the customer satisfaction metrics (CSAT) and reports we have in place for each of these channels. You are not alone if you don’t have metrics to report on all of these channels; – this is the first step you will need to complete! On what channels do you measure CSAT, and where is it not measured?

Let’s examine the channels where no CSAT measurement is taking place. Is this because a conscious decision has been made not to measure it? Have we determined that we can’t measure it? Has it been determined to be unimportant or has the idea of measuring CSAT on this channel not been considered? Remember that old management tenet, “you can manage what you can’t measure’.With your CSAT data in-hand, ask yourself is the data comparable? Are you asking the same question for each channel or do you ask different or somewhat different questions? If you are asking about satisfaction with the company or brand on one survey and asking if they were satisfied with their last call center interaction or agent, you are asking two separate and distinct questions. Unless the questions are the same you can’t aggregate the results. So if you are not asking the same questions then you have your second take away.

With comparable data you can chart the CSAT across all communication channels. Look at the results and what do you see…If you are like the majority of organizations you see a much lower level of satisfaction than we would like to see… almost two thirds of 15 verticals surveyed had a customer experience average scores of 70% or less.

The CSAT score is the customers’ opinion of the service interaction quality for the interaction they have just completed. In the same way our internal quality assessment scores are our satisfaction with our agents being able to address all of the elements that we think should be important to both the customer and the company. In the vast majority of organizations these two assessments measure two distinct elements. They are not the same.

Sad or not the scores that our customers have given us are their opinions of the service we provide. This is the customer experience we have now. This is the result of the service model we have designed and put into place.

The last step in defining the current customer experience is to look at what messages we are providing to our customers and prospects. To gain an understanding of what these messages are look at the company Mission Statement and Company Values…are you speaking of ‘World Class Customer Service’ or ‘Committed to quality’ or satisfaction or customers are a priority etc.Keep in mind that it has been said that the accuracy of a Mission Statement is inversely proportional to its length. That is to say that the longer the mission statement the less likely it is to be true, or realised to be true. It has also been said that “If the mission statement doesn’t fit on a T shirt, it’s too long.”

Next meet with the Marketing people and review their current marketing campaigns and messages…do the company mission/value/vision statement and the marketing messages match the customer experience we are delivering?

It is important that when examining the marketing and brand messages that we see the emotional aspect to most messages. People make decisions on emotion – then rationalize with intellect. What this means is how the messages make them feel has a great deal to do with how a customer will feel about a brand, a product or a service interaction. In call and contact centers we often focus narrowly on what can and can’t be said. Maya Angelou said “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.”

This can be a two edged sword. If our advertising and marketing make them feel warm and fuzzy about our brand and products. This is good and will be remembered. Many centers employ scripts or provide little latitude to empower the agents to make decisions to satisfy customers. Customers are also likely to remember how angry, frustrated, stressed and unhappy interacting with the call center made them feel. In too many organizations the Marketing department and the call center are working in opposite directions even though the success of the company is their shared objective.

In the diagram above we can see the shift from the promise that Marketing makes to product delivery and the service supported by the call center. When considered in terms of how a customer perception is shaped the excitement or anticipation starts high and often degrades with the reality of delivery and after sales service.

Let’s look at a hypothetical organization with the following Mission Statement;“To deliver World Class Customer Service to our Customers, by providing access to our products and services the way our customers want them, when they want them, while providing a positive, enjoyable and productive environment to our employees and delivering superior returns to our Shareholders”

From this Mission Statement we can see what the company values:• World Class Customer Service,• Unfettered access to products/services- based on time and based on channel,• A productive, enjoyable and positive environment for staff,• Superior returns for Shareholders

As we continue down the process we have set out a few minutes ago we would then meet with Marketing to discover the attributes of the Brand. The following is a reasonable set of attributes associated with our hypothetical brand;Accessible,Cares about Customers,Daring,Different,Energy,Fun,Glamorous,Stylish,Trendy,Youthful,

By looking again at the original emotional call flow we reviewed earlier we can now match the experience to the desired Brand attributes

With the ‘current state’ of our Customer Experience picture in hand, we can next look to the experience we wish to create.Do the Mission/Vision/Value and Marketing messages support the Customer Experience we want to create?

What descriptions and phases would we use to define this experience?

What descriptions would our customers use to define this experience?

Now describe how we want a customer to feel following an interaction?

The answers to these questions become the starting point of aligning the contact center with the brand message.We are now equipped with a number of building blocks that we will need to develop our customer experience roadmap.Look at complaints. Map the processes required to support delivery of desire customer experiences. Identify policies and procedures that are in opposition to the identified customer experience descriptors? Identify all processes, policies and procedures that are not aligned with the desired Customer Experience and raise these with management for discussion, review and revision.

To summarize the steps in designing a Customer Experience Roadmap are as follows;1. Know what the current experience is,2. Know how you are measuring the experience,3. Understand your policies, processes and any negative customer impacts,4. Plan changes and tests,5. Measure improvements/reductions as a result of tests,6. Roll out positive changes and continue other tests,Or displayed graphically

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

In our call center consulting practice we often assist call centers understand and rationaize their Customer Experience strategy. This includes aligning the call center operational model with the desired Customer Experience.

In this third article in our Customer Experience (click to view Part 1 and Part 2 )and the Call Center series we examine how that alignment process can actually operate.

In the diagram above we can see the shift from the promise that Marketing makes to product delivery and the service supported by the call center. When considered in terms of how a customer perception is shaped the excitement or anticipation starts high and often degrades with the reality of delivery and after sales service. Let’s look at a hypothetical organization with the following Mission Statement;“To deliver World Class Customer Service to our Customers, by providing access to our products and services the way our customers want them, when they want them, while providing a positive, enjoyable and productive environment to our employees and delivering superior returns to our Shareholders”From this Mission Statement we can see what the company values:• World Class Customer Service,• Unfettered access to products/services- based on time and based on channel,• A productive, enjoyable and positive environment for staff,• Superior returns for ShareholdersAs we continue down the process we have set out a few minutes ago we would then meet with Marketing to discover the attributes of the Brand. The following is a reasonable set of attributes associated with our hypothetical brand;Accessible,Cares about Customers,Daring,Different,Energy,Fun,Glamorous,Stylish,Trendy,Youthful,

By looking again at the original emotional call flow we reviewed earlier we can now match the experience to the desired Brand attributes

With the ‘current state’ of our Customer Experience picture in hand, we can next look to the experience we wish to create. Do the Mission/Vision/Value and Marketing messages support the Customer Experience we want to create?

What descriptions and phases would we use to define this experience?

What descriptions would our customers use to define this experience?

Now describe how we want a customer to feel following an interaction?

The answers to these questions become the starting point of aligning the contact center with the brand message.We are now equipped with a number of building blocks that we will need to develop our customer experience roadmap.Look at complaints. Map the processes required to support delivery of desire customer experiences. Identify policies and procedures that are in opposition to the identified customer experience descriptors? Identify all processes, policies and procedures that are not aligned with the desired Customer Experience and raise these with management for discussion, review and revision.

To summarize the steps in designing a Customer Experience Roadmap are as follows;1. Know what the current experience is,2. Know how you are measuring the experience,3. Understand your policies, processes and any negative customer impacts,4. Plan changes and tests,5. Measure improvements/reductions as a result of tests,6. Roll out positive changes and continue other tests, Or displayed graphically

We would welcome your comments, suggestions or questions regarding this post, Please share

Monday, September 20, 2010

This is the second post on delivering the Customer Expereience through the call center. You can find the first installment hereBefore starting to architect the Customer Experience, let’s start by defining itThe key elements of any Customer Experience related to the contact center has to include:1. The ease of access – to information, to purchase, to inquire, to complain or to fix a problem,2. The speed of access – Service level, hoops customers have to jump through – how many times do they have to enter their account number etc. time to return an email or resolve a trouble ticket?3. The quality of interaction- Where they able to get done what they wanted too? Was it easy, was it efficient, logical?Customer Experience is the experience that a customer has when interacting with a company. This includes how they chose to interact with us and how easy it is for them to complete the interaction.IBM defines Customer Experience as “The designed interaction between a customer and your organization”. The key element of this definition is the design element. The message here is regardless what your customer experience is and regardless whether it is good or bad, it is what you have designed through your actions, processes and procedures.With this definition in hand can now look at how we can design our desired customer experience.To do this we need to start at the beginning. Few companies today are looking at the customer experience holistically. For those that do consider the question of Customer Experience, it is often only a marketing concept...how should our stores, marketing and advertising look and feel to support the brand. The call centre is generally not connected organizationally to Marketing and most often resides under Operations or Sales. This distance between silos can mean that the Marketing group has little understanding of what takes place in the call center. This despite the fact that centers are the single most common communications channel an organization can have with its customers. Purdue University found that 92% of customers judge an organization based upon the interactions they have with a company’s call center. So how can we as call center executives join the dots between the desired customer experience and customer satisfaction to deliver the result through our call centers? Like with any travel, once you have a destination in mind you can then develop a roadmap to get you to where you are going. But we have a few challenges in developing a roadmap...For one thing we do not know where we are starting from. We know that most companies have not defined and documented their customer experience. So how can we expect to know where we are at now and how we are doing?The first step in our process is to assess and determine where we are now; we need to understand what the customer experience is today.First, we need an inventory of the channels, methods and touch-points through which our customers interact with us: phone, email, chat, mail, in-store etc. Do all of the touch-points end in a common single CRM that tracks each ’touch’ the company has with their customers? What about marketing initiatives: email blasts, SMS, print media, daily specials, white mail, etc. Second, we need to analyze the customer satisfaction metrics (CSAT) and reports we have in place for each of these channels. You are not alone if you don’t have metrics to report on all of these channels; - this is the first step you will need to complete! On what channels do you measure CSAT, and where is it not measured? Let’s examine the channels where no CSAT measurement is taking place. Is this because a conscious decision has been made not to measure it? Have we determined that we can’t measure it? Has it been determined to be unimportant or has the idea of measuring CSAT on this channel not been considered? Remember that old management tenet, “you can manage what you can’t measure’.With your CSAT data in-hand, ask yourself is the data comparable? Are you asking the same question for each channel or do you ask different or somewhat different questions? If you are asking about satisfaction with the company or brand on one survey and asking if they were satisfied with their last call center interaction or agent, you are asking two separate and distinct questions. Unless the questions are the same you can’t aggregate the results. So if you are not asking the same questions then you have your second take away.With comparable data you can chart the CSAT across all communication channels. Look at the results and what do you see...If you are like the majority of organizations you see a much lower level of satisfaction than we would like to see... almost two thirds of 15 verticals surveyed had a customer experience average scores of 70% or less. The CSAT score is the customers’ opinion of the service interaction quality for the interaction they have just completed. In the same way our internal quality assessment scores are our satisfaction with our agents being able to address all of the elements that we think should be important to both the customer and the company. In the vast majority of organizations these two assessments measure two distinct elements. They are not the same.Sad or not the scores that our customers have given us are their opinions of the service we provide. This is the customer experience we have now. This is the result of the service model we have designed and put into place.The last step in defining the current customer experience is to look at what messages we are providing to our customers and prospects. To gain an understanding of what these messages are look at the company Mission Statement and Company Values...are you speaking of ‘World Class Customer Service’ or ‘Committed to quality’ or satisfaction or customers are a priority etc. Keep in mind that it has been said that the accuracy of a Mission Statement is inversely proportional to its length. That is to say that the longer the mission statement the less likely it is to be true, or realised to be true. It has also been said that “If the mission statement doesn't fit on a T shirt, it's too long.” Next meet with the Marketing people and review their current marketing campaigns and messages...do the company mission/value/vision statement and the marketing messages match the customer experience we are delivering?It is important that when examining the marketing and brand messages that we see the emotional aspect to most messages. People make decisions on emotion – then rationalize with intellect. What this means is how the messages make them feel has a great deal to do with how a customer will feel about a brand, a product or a service interaction. In call and contact centers we often focus narrowly on what can and can’t be said. Maya Angelou said “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.” This can be a two edged sword. If our advertising and marketing make them feel warm and fuzzy about our brand and products. This is good and will be remembered. Many centers employ scripts or provide little latitude to empower the agents to make decisions to satisfy customers. Customers are also likely to remember how angry, frustrated, stressed and unhappy interacting with the call center made them feel. In too many organizations the Marketing department and the call center are working in opposite directions even though the success of the company is their shared objective.

The Customer Experience and the Call Center Part 1By Colin TaylorLike culture, all companies deliver a Customer Experience. Also like culture, it isn’t always what the company intended. It is often a poor customer experience. Does your call center deliver the promised Customer Experience? Does your company have a document outlining what the customer experience is supposed to be? No, thats not surprising, few companies do. And all of us who don’t have a Customer Experience model in place are in good company. According to a recent Forresters’ report while 90% of executives said that the customer experience was very important or critical, only 11% consider themselves to be very disciplined in their approach to customer experience.Let’s look at an interaction with a call center from the customers’ perspectiveAs you can see from the above illustration the customer expectations and emotions rise and fall as the call progresses. All of us who have listened, monitored or taken live calls know this to be true. What are the ‘pain points’ on the call we looked at earlier?• Service Level – waiting too long to get the call answered,• “Unexpectedly high call volume” – unexpected volume or poor forecasting/scheduling,• Policies etc.At all of the key points during the call the agent has an opportunity to support the brand messages and to meet the customer expectations or not. Of course it is far simple to suggest that the agent could have done x or y. The truth of the matter is that it is the company that makes the decisions that impact the service delivery. The agent can really only work within the parameters the company sets out. It is the company that determines the grade of service that they want the call center to meet. It is the company through the center management that forecasts the calls and contact volumes and sets the schedules for the number of agents on shift. It is the company that establishes policies and procedures that the agents must adhere too.Now let’s not place on the blame on the call center and its management solely. It is the marketing group that creates and sends the messages that create the customer expectations which leads the customer to place calls into the call center with these expectations.So how can we ensure that your customers receive the experience we would like them to have? An experience that builds loyalty; An experience that supports repurchase; An experience that reduces customer churn and attrition.In our next post we will examine how we can define our desired customer experience.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

I want your assistance. We are doing a study to track the shift in the Predictive Dialler market from Premise based solutions to SaaS. If you employ a predictive dialler, please take our poll by follwing this link

Monday, August 16, 2010

Just saw this article on CBC.caAs a call center consultant at a call center consulting firm, I am frequently asked to comment on the health of the call and contact centre industry in Canada. The environment today does have some glimmers of hope; such as the Convergys announcement of 120 new jobs, Telelink announcing 40 more jobs in St John’s and Swinton announcing 65 in Nova Scotia, but the industry is still recovering from significant contraction that occurred due to the double whammy of the recession and increased strength of the Canadian dollar.Many call centres in Canada serve the United States market and these centres saw job cuts as a result of the recession in the US and significantly increased operational expenses as a result of the strengthening of the Canadian dollar. The political backlash in the US of outsourcing and specifically off-shoring has lead to protectionist activities and the establishment of outsource agencies in the US that state their mission as ‘bringing jobs back to the US”. This political pressure has caused US firms to reassess their Canadian call centres. Some of the victims of these factors have been Convergys which whose call centre in Winnipeg closed impacting 500 people earlier this year, Minacs closure in Nova Scotia impacting 200 people. Both of these firms are outsource or BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) firms and serve customers internationally. It is not outsources who are facing challenges; Canwest outsourced 300 jobs from Winnipeg to the Dominican Republic and Bell Aliant closed a number of call centres in Atlantic Canada.As the recovery sputters along we will hopefully continue to see glimmers of hope in terms of new hiring in the call centre industry, but I expect most of these to be to serve domestic customers; the US is still far from a real recovery and faced with a weak economy, increased costs of operating in Canada and political pressure to repatriate jobs to the US and this will lead to additional closures and layoffs in the call centre industry.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Social media exposure doesn’t equal success. I know this may sound like heresy to some, but the facts speak for themselves. One of the most successful ads in recent history; Old Spices’ “The Man, Your Man could Smell Like” has racked up impressive social media numbers 94 million YouTube views. 630,000 fans on Facebook and an estimated 1 billion aggregate impressions in one week according to Fast Company. However sales of the product the ad promotes is actually down 7% according to SymphonyIRI . So as Carla Peller said in the most famous ad of its time “Where’s the Beef”? It is interesting to note that while the campaign was very popular “Where’s the Beef” didn’t equate to more sales for Wendy’s either.So we have a dichotomy, popularity doesn’t equal success in either the current social media age any better than it did thirty-five years ago in the pre-social (anti-social?) media age. The inverse is also similarly true; being unpopular doesn’t mean you will fail. Often there is a small cadre of unhappy folks who can and frequently do spend all their time blogging, tweeting and posting about the object of their hearts distain (can you say wireless or cable providers?) The simple mass of negative POV doesn’t in and of itself doesn’t cause a company to fail. Observers will quickly note that it is the same individuals making the disparaging remarks. There is likely some version of the Pareto principle at work here, where 80% or some other similar number of total complaints originates with 20% of customers or users.Being popular or liked isn’t the same as being trusted or respected. This difference will drive the next generation of social media overlaying trust and respect on top being known, liked or popular. It will be interesting to see the results of the Fast Company Influence Project which is underway now to see who the most influential person is on the Internet. This project is still underway but to date there are almost 20,000 people registered for the project. I am curious to see if this really does inform us as to who is influential or if it simply becomes a popularity contest.Regardless of whether we are talking about influence, trust or popularity there is a lot of content flowing by us in social media channels and some of it will mention our company name and our products and services. There will be kudos and many more complaints and critiques. So what does this mean to the operator of a call or contact center? At minimum it may be time to take your head out of the sand...social media is real and your customers are using it. Where your choices are to ignore what they are saying or trying to figure out how to monitor it, there really isn’t a choice. We must listen. The first task in integrating social media into your contact center is to define your role and mission. We have to concede that there is no way we can look, listen to or respond to all social media channels for mentions of our companies, there are simply too many channels and too much content. Sturgeons Law which says that “90% of everything is crap” (or crud, if you prefer) is in play here. Much of what passes for content is self promotion. Given the volume of content and the inability to respond to all of it an organization must limit themselves to what they can do consistently. The most common model is to establish a ‘listening post’ to ‘listen’ to the social media dialogue. This involves searching on Facebook, Twitter and Google for references to you company and products and on-going monitoring for future references. Some companies endeavour to try to respond to each individual post, tweet or comment. While this is a noble ambition it is often doomed by the speed of growth of social media channels and users and the absence of tools. We recommend that in place of 100% individual response to each comment or post you strive to ensure that you have visibility to those who have complained...follow them on Twitter, add them to a customer list and send list messages with the call center toll free number and/or send an direct response asking them to phone the call center, post a response to the question or comment if it is found in forum, LinkedIn or similar, send them a friend request and write on their wall on Facebook. In addition by developing tweets, posts and links that address frequent customer service questions and that include the call center toll free number the time to complete each response can be significantly reduced.Simply by doing the above you will gain so valuable knowledge regarding the number of negative statements that are distributed through social media, they types and nature of the complaints, insight into your own 80/20 of complainants, and you will have established a presence within the social media milieu.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

As a call center consultant when I meet or speak to somone who has just been given the job of Call Center Manager, my response is always the same, "Congratulations or condolenses on your promotion, whichever you feel is more appropriate". Seriously, managing a call center can be one of the hardest jobs in the world.

So what can the new manager do in the first month to dramatically improve their chances for success? In this post we examine the critical steps in brief.

Many centers were not designed, but rather evolved over time without a masterplan or a strategy. Often these same centers have not applied rigor to the process of staff selection nor staff promotion. The result can be a center where the single biggest asset and indicator of operational success, the ability to manage, being absent. This can make the job of the manager very difficult indeed.

So job one is to assess your supervisory and leadership staff compare their skills and capabilities and contrast these with the job functions and activities. Once you have completed the assessment and know which or your line staff can complete their duties, you can look at the actual operation of the center.

Once you have completed the above you can then begin to examine the operations. This is done by examining the 'thousand moving parts' of any call or contact center and 'bucketing' these elements under:People.- Recruiting, hiring, career path, quality, rewards & RecognitionProcess- Map all processes in the center as well as those that begin or end elsewhereTechnology- Assess the capabilities of the technology to optimize processes- are there better technology fitsMethodology- what you measure, KPI's etc as well as what you do with them.

With your results in hand ask yourself-Are our proceses causing us to fail and Is the call center aligned to support our corporate objectives. The answers to these questions will help you to focus your attention over the next weeks and months.

If you complete the above exercises you will be well equipped to manage you center moving forward.

Monday, July 26, 2010

Congratulations or condolenses on your promotion, whichever you feel is more appropriate. Seriously managing a call center can be one of the hardest jobs in the world. Many centers were not designed, but rather evolved over time without a masterplan or a strategy. Often these same centers have not applied rigor to the process of staff selection nor staff promotion. The result can be a center where the single biggest asset and indicator of operational success, the ability to manage, being absent. This can make the job of the manager very difficult indeed.

So job one is to assess your supervisory and leadership staff compare their skills and capabilities and contrast these with the job functions and activities. Once you have completed the assessment and know which or your line staff can complete their duties, you can look at the actual operation of the center.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Long before my career in call center consulting and call center operations and management I took Radio and Teleivsion in college, but never worked a day in this field, so using youtube is the closest I have come.Video may have killed the radio star according to the Buggles, but we will see how video treats call center consultants. Taylor Reach has just posted our first video case studies on youtube, Part 1 is found here and you can view Part 2 of this case study interview with Carla Kearns of Summerhill Group and Colin Taylor here discussing the Retire Your Ride automotive recycling program. We will be working hard to create one new video case study each month and well as producing videos which will help educate and inform our audience.

Monday, July 19, 2010

Anyone that operates as a call center consulting firm has heard this question before: what is the cost of poor service to my organization? According to recent research the answer may be $243. Is one call, email or chat in your center worth $243? That’s the cost that a Greenfield/Ovum study found in a 16 country survey completed last December. $243 is the average value of a lost relationship based upon the 8,800 consumers surveyed. Where do these lost relationships go you might ask? According to the survey 63% of relationships are lost to competitors while 37% are abandoned completely.

We know inherently that there is a cost to poor service, but it has been difficult to pin down. Of course this is a survey and is still not specific enough to each of our businesses or companies, but it is yet another data point. To get a sense of how appropriate this figure is to your organization, look at this figure ($243) and compare it to your own estimate of Lifetime Value (the amount of money a customer is expected to spend with your company over his/her life), if your Lifetime Value is higher than $243, then the $243 figure may be on the low side. Regardless of your actual cost and whether or not you can pin it down to the penny, it is a significant figure.

You as a call center operator can influence this cost. In fact you can look at the call center’s role as protecting hundreds of thousands or even millions of these $243 relationships. The call center is the front line. This is where the rubber meets the road. Customers call and email and chat and write letters because they want and or need your help. On each and every contact your agents are the company to the customers. These agents are the individuals who are guarding the bank $243 at a time. Are you treating each call or contact with center as if it could be worth $243 to the company?

Probably not, few organizations are. Call centers are designed to efficiently manage a number of call and contact types that are recurring and similar. When handling these types of contacts the center generally does well and meets the customers’ expectations. For many center the problems do not lie with the 95% of calls or contacts that reflect their common contact types, but is with the 5% that are infrequent, unusual or complex. We know customers can be fickle and we know that even if the `customer isn`t always right, they are always the customer`. We cannot please 100% of any population. We inherently know this but if the majority of our customer churn occurs in 5% of our contacts then the price we need to attach to these calls/contacts maybe far higher than the $243 price tag. While I do not have empirical data to support this point of view I do have 30 plus years experience in operating and managing contact centers.

The key to addressing this 5% problem is to fully understand the problem or situation or in the absence of experience with any particular problem to have the processes in place to ensure that these inquiries are addressed rapidly, completely and communicated to the customer. These processes include escalation and root cause analysis. By ensuring that a defined escalation process is in place the company gains an opportunity to listen to the customer, confirm that their situation is not simply another retelling of an existing call type told from a different perspective and to probe to fully understand the situation. Once the situation or problem is completely understood a solution can be sought. This solution often is found through a detailed root cause analysis to drill down through the customer’s experience of the product or service to identify the underlying issue(s) that have created or allowed this situation to be created.

Of course poor service costs companies millions of dollars annually, by ensuring that your center has ‘bullet-proof’ escalation processes and employs root cause analysis you can go a long way to protect your customer relationships and succeed on those $243 calls.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Sturgeons Law or revelation states that 90% of everything is crap. Now there is some debate as to whether he was speaking just about Science Fiction (he was a sci fi author) or literally about everything. Regardless of his target this quote first made in 1951 seems incredibly prophetic today when considering social media.

I have dipped my toe in this ‘pond’ and have found the law to be correct; 90% of everything on the net and on social media is in fact crap. I mean really, who cares what you or I for that matter, had for breakfast? The social media ‘pond’ is incredibly wide, but disturbingly shallow. To explore this premise I first looked at Twitter, life in 140 characters.

A review of the Twitter clickstream reveals congratulations to the Jonas brothers Mothers birthday for giving birth, a retweet of a link to Lance Armstrong’s crash at the Tour de France, homage to Harvey Pekar (a cartoonist) and Steve Nash’s goodbye to a former Suns teammate. Perhaps the clickstream is too broad to really mine any great value from this social media channel.

Drilling down to search just customer service on Twitter helps to demonstrate this fact...of more than 200 tweets under the topic of customer service revealed perhaps a surprising result;more than a third of all tweets in the search were job postings to hire customer service staff, 19% were posts of a promotional nature...read my posts, buy my services etc, 16% were ‘darts’ of tweets saying that company XYZ has terrible customer service (it is interesting to note the only repeated company was AT&T), 12% were ‘How to Guides’ for social media and/or customer service (many of these could also have been categorized as promotional, they just don’t appear to be gratuitous, 10% were Kudos to companies with good or great service tied to a specific event, 6% were mundane observations; on my break watching the customers in line, hoping they will be gone before my break ends etc, and lastly 4%of the tweets were actually focused on customer service via twitter; company XYZ suggests that @colinsataylor calls our call center at 1-877-XXX-XXXX so we can resolve your problem. For all the talk, chatter and blathering about leveraging social media to support your customer service a remarkably small number of companies actually appear to be doing so.

Sturgeons’ Law is really akin to the Pareto principal, better known as the 80/20 rule that says that 80% of you Revenues come from 20% of your customers. We know that the 80/20 split is arbitrary but there is a number for most companies that will reflect something close to this ratio. Sturgeons’’ Law is an arbitrary number also and in some situations the content that is not crap may be more than 10%. In my small study if we remove the Jobs, gratuitous promotion, ‘How to’ guides and the mundane observations we are left with kudos, darts and actual Customer Service activities totalling 30%. If we examine only the actionable opportunities; the darts and true requests for Customer Service the number drops to 20%. In this case it appears that only 80% of everything on twitter is crap.

So, how are we to employ Twitter in our call centers to improve our customer service? I suggest it is by looking at the 20% cited above that is not crap. Too many companies and individuals simply employ Twitter as a ‘broadcast’ media, that is to say they simple write a promotion message and keep tweeting it, over and over. This would be the majority of the Promotional and at least half of the Educational Tweets cited in my mini study above or fully 25% of all tweets reviewed. The constraint of 140 characters regardless of how small your tinyurl is can be little more than “trust me I can help you, tweet call or email me”. If instead of trying to cram a promotional broadcast message into such a small space we are better to try and find out the problems, pains and challenges that need solving. To do this on Twitter as in life we need to listen. For my money the best application for Twitter in a customer service call center is as a listening post. By monitoring the clickstream and identifying the 16% of dissatisfied customers and reaching out to them, you may be able to help them resolve their issues. Please direct those needing assistance to the call center, don’t try to deliver service via Twitter. If we can help a customer or prospect resolve their issue, not only will they stop slinging ‘darts’ they may actually provide positive word of mouth and even kudos via Twitter and other social media channels. At the end of day Sturgeon is right and most of everything is crap. If we ignore the crap and listen to our customers, try to help those throwing darts, retweet those sharing kudos and direct those actively seeking support we will have done our part to assist these customers but also to support our companies and brands.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

FCR is a popular topic we see on our call center consulting engagements.Yesterday’s post dealt with the cost of ineffective call or contact resolution, citing an 80% First Contact Resolution (FCR) rate will add 25% to your average cost per contact and the importance of budgeting accurately to reflect the actual costs. In today’s post I wanted to examine a number of ways that FCR is measured in call centers and risks, benefits and various ‘gremlins’ that can influence the accuracy of your FCR statistics and present some ideas to help address or mitigate these issues.

Increasingly pundits and call center consultants like ourselves are promoting the use of FCR as the most valuable metrics for call center operations. It is difficult to argue against FCR as the perfect measure. On the surface it looks easy. We know customers and prospects are calling us to do something (pay a bill, order a product, get technical help etc.). Studies have consistently shown that when people get what they want, they are happier than when they do not.

For the time being let’s put aside the fact that successfully resolving an inquiry may not give the customer what they want: I want a refund says the customer and we quote David Spade in those old Capital One TV ads and say ‘No’. But FCR should be measuring whether the contact; call, inquiry was resolved, not whether the customer liked the resolution.

It can be challenging to measure FCR in a contact center environment. If you ask ten people how they do it you will hear a number of different responses. Some of the measurement approaches we have heard of include:

• Telephone Call Detail based – If the customer calls back within ‘X’ hours/days (48 hours, 72 hours 1 week), so the theory goes then we did not resolve the customers issue.• IVR Survey based – What could be better than offering customers the ability to tell us how we did by offering them a post call survey.• Agent based – The agent asks the customer if they have resolved the customers issue and this is then entered into the CRM or similar system.

Each of these approaches has benefits and potential risks or shortcomings. For example the Telephone Call Detail approach has the benefit of presenting a black and white picture of FCR. Once you have accepted the time window associated and accept the premise that the customer could have no other reason for calling again then the results have a good level of consistency.

Of course there may be reasons for the customer to call back: they ordered the wrong size, provided the wrong ship to address, received a new bill in the mail, have a second account with different issues etc. In the absence of robust analytics to provide a high level of data interrogation most centers will end up with a level of ‘false negatives’. That is to say that they will identify calls as not resolved when in fact the subsequent contact could be unrelated. This will mean a lower FCR score than they may actually be the case.

In contrast the Agent based approach of asking the customer if their inquiry was resolved before ending the original call, can also result in “false positives’. All of us who have worked as agents or with agents knows that there is a different perspective when speaking with a customer versus listening to the call or being the customer. The agents may ask the customer the question “Have I fully resolved your Inquiry” or something similar or they may not. The agent may simply check the box thinking that they asked the question or because they provided the appropriate response from the knowledgebase, so it must be resolved, right? Of course if the customer sounds unhappy or rushed the agent may choose to answer on the customers behalf etc. All of these scenarios will result in ‘false positives’ that is to say reporting that will indicate a higher FCR rate than likely exists.

One of the most prevalent solutions these days is the IVR survey, which in most cases 3 to 5 questions dealing with the call, as well as with overall satisfaction or net promoter etc. On the surface it appears to be a valid approach. What could be better than asking the customer? But depending on how it is deployed: by the agent seeking consent or before the agent answers the call by the IVR, you can have significant problems.

First as we looked at above the agents will not always offer the survey…in short they will or could play a triage role in limiting who gets into the IVR. Second if the caller agrees to participate before the call is directed to an agent, they may change their mind based on what happens with the call. Consumers and customers will ‘self-select’ whether or not to participate in any survey. If they believe it will help them they often participate, if there is little perceived value then they often will not participate. In consulting projects we have seen customers who ‘believe’ that their problem was resolved and are satisfied with the resolution they participate at a far lower rate than those who feel it was not resolved or who did not like the resolution. This illustration of ‘vested self interest’ can skew the results and reflect a lower FCR than actually exists.

Regardless of which of the above solutions is employed there are some other relevant issues that will influence the FCR reported. For example the customer believes or is promised that they will receive a credit, but that doesn’t appear on their next bill. In this case the customer and even the agent may believe the original contact was fully resolved, but it wasn’t. The same will be true if the product doesn’t arrive when expected (consumers hear 4 to 6 weeks and will expect it in exactly 4 weeks). The service isn’t restored when expected (told it would be back by 5 pm and at 5:01 they will call again); or the tech support routine they are told to run, doesn’t solve the problem. These are all examples of the customer not receiving what they expected, when they expected it. Of course the customers also contribute to FCR failures by not executing what they were to do (not following instructions) or providing inaccurate information of the original call (wrong size, incorrect address, an over limit credit card etc.) which will require a subsequent call.

As you can see effectively managing FCR is not easy and whatever approach you choose to employ, you will need to expect that it will take time for you to work out all of the exceptions, bugs and kinks. Remember that at the end of the day even if your model drives false positive or false negatives if you employ it consistently you will be able to chart improvement and declines period over period.

Let me know if you would like more information on this topic please email me directly at ctaylor@thetaylorreachgroup.com or visit our website at http://thetaylorreachgroup.com as we have a number of resources which may assist you in the process of implementing effective FCR measurement and reporting in your call center.

About Me

More than 33 years of call and contact center experience. Worked in every position possible in the call/contact industry space. Recipient of more than 27 awards for call/contact center excellence. More than 14,000 agent desktops around the globe employ TRG designed operational models. CEO of The Taylor Reach Group, Inc. a call and contact center consultancy, past President & CEO of Watts Communications a large contact center outsource agency. Author, speaker and expert on all things call or contact center.
For more information visit http://www.thetaylorreachgroup.com